Aurigny’s accounts for 2024 are not ready yet, but the politician responsible for the States-owned airline has said he expects the losses to reach “several million pounds”.
Deputy Peter Roffey gave an update to the States this morning on the work of the States Trading Supervisory Board, which includes oversight of the airport, harbours, and other States-owned commercial entities.
He said, despite last year’s well publicised troubles, the airline had not had an injection of money from the tax payer since 2021.
However, Deputy Roffey is anticipating that Aurigny will confirm losses for 2024 when the States accounts are published later this year.
“I haven’t seen any actuarial figure yet. I imagine that it would be published together with as part of the State’s accounts, together with everybody else, but I imagine it’s going to run into several millions of pounds. I mean, it will be.
“I know it will run into several millions of pounds, but this is a company that will declare its results when the proper actuarial processes that have been gone through.”
Deputy Roffey was also put on the spot over the news, confirmed today, that Aurigny has outsourced its call centre to a facility in Fiji.
He said it makes sense in the current employment market.
“Aurigny, like every other local employer was struggling to find the amount of capacity that they needed, and therefore outsourcing to another jurisdiction where it was easier to increase that capacity, I think made absolute sense.”
Twin Otters still the plan
Aurigny still plans to replace its Dornier fleet with leased Twin Otter aircraft.
Deputy Roffey gave a brief update on Aurigny’s plans to update its aviation model this morning.
He said it is all subject to commercial sensitivities but “because there’s been so many false rumours, Aurigny are happy for me to put out the basic concept that they’re looking at, which will obviously be subject to approval by STSB as shareholder and P&R as the PSO issuer”.
He went on to explain that Twin Otters remain in the future fleet plan but Aurigny won’t be buying them.
“As has rightly been rumoured, the idea is to replace the Dornier with Twin Otters. However, it is not for Aurigny to buy any Twin Otters. The idea is that Aurigny would reduce to only having ATRs, but that they would do what is called ‘damp leasing’, which is half way between ‘wet leasing’ and ‘dry leasing’. So the planes will belong to somebody else, but would be badged in Aurigny’s colours and flown by Aurigny’s crew.
“The big advantage of that is there’d be huge cost savings with maintenance, for Aurigny only maintaining one type of aircraft, whereas the provider, the owner of the Twin Otters, would also have a number of other Twin Otters, so they would be looking after that maintenance, and it will be at a very, very considerable cost saving.
“And I know (Aurigny) are also looking at the possibility of having a third aircraft on standby for medevac, so that they don’t have to constantly take the passenger aircraft out of circulation whenever a medevac comes about.
“They believe that has not only increased resilience considerably, for instance, by making sure replacement aircraft are available when maintenance is going on, but it would also reduce the cost of the PSO. So that is their concept, and I think they’re talking to two large fleet owners of Twin Otters at the moment. I’m not going to name them, because it’s a competitive situation.”